DM Monitoring
BAGHDAD: A security member and a civilian were wounded in a roadside bomb exploded near a convoy of trucks belonging to the U.S.-led coalition forces in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, the Iraqi military said on Sunday.
The attack took place in Shula neighborhood in northwestern Baghdad on Saturday night when the roadside bomb went off near a vehicle belonging to an Iraqi security company contracted with the international coalition to escort its trucks in Iraq, the media office of the Iraqi Joint Operations Command said in a brief statement.
The blast resulted in the wounding of a security member from the Iraqi company and a civilian, the statement said.
No group has so far claimed responsibility for the attack, but unidentified militant groups have frequently targeted civilian convoys contracted to the U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq, which usually travel from neighboring Kuwait to the coalition bases in central and northern Iraq.
The attacks came as the Iraqi-U.S. relations have witnessed a tension since Jan. 3 when a U.S. drone struck a convoy at Baghdad airport, which killed Qassem Soleimani, former commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy chief of Iraq’s paramilitary Hashd Shaabi forces.
More than 5,000 U.S. troops have been deployed in Iraq to support the Iraqi forces in the battles against the Islamic State militants, mainly providing training and advising to the Iraqi forces.
